Red Cross says detainees abused

Report: U.S. tactics amount to torture

November 30, 2004|By Neil A. Lewis, New York Times News Service.

WASHINGTON — The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in a confidential report to the U.S. government that the American military has used psychological and physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of June in Guantanamo.

The team of humanitarian workers, which included medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantanamo helped plan interrogations in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

Medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or BSCT. The team, known informally as "Biscuit," is made up of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said.

Asked about the report, a Pentagon spokesman provided a statement saying, "The United States operates a safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantanamo that is providing valuable information in the war on terrorism."

The U.S. government, which received the report in July, rejected its charges, administration and military officials said.

The report was distributed to lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and State Department and to the commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo, Gen. Jay Hood. The New York Times recently obtained a memorandum, based on the report, that quotes from it in detail and lists its major findings.

It was the first time that the Red Cross, which has conducted visits to Guantanamo since January 2002, asserted in such strong terms that the treatment of detainees amounted to torture.

The report said investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantanamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions."

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the report said.

It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to "some beatings."